Thursday, December 24, 2015

It is that
time of year once again. A time of reflection, a time to look back on the year
past, and forward to the year to come… a time to, well, to reacquaint once self
with those strange people in your house who seem to be always hanging around,
eating your food and asking for money… and botherin’ you about things that you and I
know are simply not as interesting, or important as anything you do when they
leave you alone.

But that’s
what these dead of the winter days of gatherings & gift giving, family
& friends and dining & drinking… (til you puke up multicolored fruit
cake… which BTW, IS real) are for, right?

As for Flyin
the Deadly Skies of EVE… (or Elite Dangerous or even Star Citizen) Well, there
have been a lot of changes since I last posted a Saturnalia update. HBHI has
been mothballed for a few years now, an alt of mine holds sway there, all on
her lonesome…

We had all
joined HELPeR a corp we have been close friends with for as long as I have been
in EVE. Then my son, AI, went on sabat… sold off a goodly portion of his stuff
(gave me some major ISKies) and mothballed AI.

We had a
rollicking good time for a number of months… old friends, new members, moved to
a C4, ran C5 sites, made some mad ISK and roamed lowsec for PVP… then the usual
summer malaise seemed to take hold, however at this time it still remains
basically unbroken. I log in alone, run gas and Frostlines and log off… alone.

Tsra is
keeping the POSes fueled and will until the corp either starts loggin’ back in
or decide to unanchor and move out to Empire for a spell.

For me I went
to my first EVE Meet, then another… started my first real alt. We had Seekers
in Hisec and the advent of the Drifters. I started playing Elite Dangerous and
even bumbled around Star Citizen a bit… that added to this and that IRL and I
have not been logging in nor blogging as much as I used to.

For EVE we have had
a HUGE number of changes… lots of new ships, really massive changes to nullsec
Sov and Force Projection, some scandals and lots of drama both in the game and
in the meta. We have gone from Major Expansions with point patches to no
Expansions but a steady 6 week roll out schedule, and now we are back to Major
Expansions with point patches again… Proteus, Tiamat, Scylla, Mosaic, Carnyx, Aegis,
Galatea, Vanguard, Parallax to… well, whatever you call the Dec 8th
patchspansion.

2015 has
been a strange year for EVE as I am sure most will agree…Here’s hoping 2016
brings as much excitement, change and possibility as 2015 did… as the Chinese
saying goes,

“May you live in Interesting
Times.”

So grab a
Grolsh from the Beer Tree out on the ramp, pull up a seat and let's talk
spaceships... =]

* Module Tiericide on Remote Repair
Modules. More details can be found here.

This is of interest to me
obviously… but I am not a number guy so I usually wait for the changes to land
then test ‘em out and see what I will see. However I am interested in how all
this, “…remote armor, shield and hull
reps all now have falloff (this falloff reduces effectiveness as you get
further from your target)” will affect us in site running… and PVP.

Exploration:

* The presence of Drifter wormholes around
New Eden has been increased.

Lots of changes to exploration,
but I don’t do a lot of that so…

Graphics:

* Visual Damage System - Your ship
will now display a shield when taking damage, if your attacker gets through
your shields you will see localized armor damage.

Have seen the shields vids and
prayed for something like it for YEARS!! Am very pleased to read that we will
also see armor damage after shields drop… Yeah CCP!

* The battle between light and dark is over,
the brightness slider has been implemented into the settings menu!

As long as this means I can
adjust the brightness of those godsawful gas clouds in sites… then just Oh
Hellz YES!!

* The following visual effects have been
renovated:

Ship
& Drone engine boosters

Warp
Entry

Wormhole
Jump

ECCM

ECM
Burst

Sensor Booster

Stasis Web

Survey Scanner

Tracking Booster

Smart Bombs (EMP, Graviton, Photon, Plasma)

* Your ship will now accumulate dirt and
grime over time. (Note: You can clean your ship’s hull through the fitting
window.)

All the above just simply good
stuff, ‘nough said. And I know, I know… Kill
Marks… Look, I’m usually a Logibro or Hero Tackle so when WE get Kill Marks
for assists then I’ll care.

Modules:

* Three new ice Mining Lasers usable only on
Expedition frigates are now available.

* The Micro Jump Field generator is now available.
More details can be found here.

* Missile Disruption modules are now
available. More details can be found here.

Good, mmmmmm... good…

Missions & NPCs:

Science & Industry:

EVE has Missions & NPCs and Science and...? (you know...)

Ships:

* The brand new Expedition Frigate
known as the Endurance has been released. More details regarding the Endurance
can be found here.

* Four brand new Command Destroyers,
which can utilize the new Micro Jump Field generators have been released. More
details regarding the Command Destroyers can be found here.

* Four brand new Tech II Logistics Frigates
have been released. More details on these ships can be found here.

All of these just make we wet.

Skills:

Books for teh new ships of course…

SKINs:

Some care, me not so much.

Technical:

* Grid boxes have been increased in size
from 250km to 7800km.

This is huge… I mean HUGE… and
not just 7800km huge either. HOLEE SHEET! Logged on, setup an all-fast-nothing-else interceptor and burned hard north... new off grid safe at the POS?? 13,395km... Yup... we do shit BIGGER in holes!

User Interface:

* Visual update to probes and d-scan cone.

* Added an icon to the Watch List for when
you are targeting and have targeted a member.

* Interbus Ship Identification System has
been renamed.(interesting… LOL)

* Broadcast section of the fleet window is
expanded by default.

All good worthwhile changes.

FIXES:

Audio:

* Expanded the advanced audio Atmosphere
slider to include Incursion system entry sounds.

I will admit to being of a
somewhat ‘grr goons‘ turn of mind, though definitely a lower case version more
like grr goons lite™, nothing like the full bore Gobblinish “GRR GOONS” mindset
nor of the far moar tinfoil & trollish “GRR RMTing GOONS” of the Dimmy
Snetterton set.

My personal take on Mittens,
Goons and their antics is more based on the simple fact that I just don’t like
liars and cheats and scammers on general principle and the new Viceroyalty
Pogrom is nothing more than the same play that was made on my home corp wayyy back
when we were just noobs. That was nothing moar than a straightforward EVE style
Hisec WarDec Protection Racket. This Viceroyalty thing is just the same racket all
dressed up and being played out on a much larger stage for moar ISK in Null
& Lowsec.

While I am at best luke warm
about Goons the majority of the time, and at worst case a little worried about
their impact on our great game every so often based on specific cases I have always
said that no matter what else you say about them, they do create content and as
Bad Guys go, we could have far worse… and EVE needs good Bad Guys.

“EVE needs ‘good’ Bad Guys?” “Are
you fuked in the head?” I hear your frown and mumble… Yes, and No.

Think about it… in all other
MMO’s (that I know of) the Bad Guys are normally fairly powerful, hard but not
impossible to kill, NPC “Bosses” and their less powerful though usually numerous
horde of mindless minions. And yes we do have Sansha Koveki, and Bloody Omar
and all the somewhat LOLable thousands upon thousands of pirate and faction NPC’s
we take contracts on to kill for their bounties, but none of them, not even the
Sleepers or hell, not even the Drifters are “The Big Bad Guys” of EVE. NPCs are
not and cannot be the Final Dungeon Boss in our game… no, in EVE it is all
about the players, about Emergent Player Behavior, and so man must fulfill this
role…

In New Eden, nihil inimicius quam sibi ipse is a cold hard truth. In EVE Man must
be his own worst enemy, we have no one else. We have to provide our own Dungeon
Bosses with their Horde of Minions to revile and strive against. And Mittens
and his gang are just that, and they don’t even just accept the role… they play
it with dedication, serious effort and, one must say, with gusto.

Why? Well… somebody has to.

As I understand it, Goons did not
originally start off as Bad Guys in EVE. From what I have read and heard they
started out as most of us do, players just playing the game. Not intending to
be asshats or Bad Men much less THE Bad Guys of EVE. Yes they started out
centered around a core of players from the Something Awful forums and that
became a ’thing’ for them.

Being “Community Born”, as
Mittens calls it has obviously contributed to their disassociation from the “EVE
Born”, IE the rest of us. This has helped to foster a mindset of “us” against
“them” with ‘them’ being everyone not a Goon. And that made it far far
easier for the Mittani to take the steps into spying and subversion and for the
line troops to follow he who became Darth Mittens and with him to embrace the
Dark Side, and all that goes with it.

Their descent into evil was
something that also grew out of the war against BoB and in general their desire
and the fight to take and hold Sov in nullsec. And yes, once they decided to put
on the Black Hat of the Bad Guys, they surely didn’t do it in half measures now
did they? No, in for a penny, in for a pound as they say. And so, here we are…
living and dying in a New Eden that has real life booygmen… and this is not,
necessarily, a bad thing.

I had a discussion with a friend
and co-worker who has been a long time WoW player and who joined us in EVE
about 6 months ago because WoW had become, well, boring for him. He gave it a
good try, had me and another co-worker who also joined us in EVE, pulling for
him. I gave him the PLEX I got for him subbing, so ISK was not a major issue
for him… But EVE is a niche game, a very niche game, and he is simply not a
highly social or a PVP centric player. Now he is flying in Elite Dangerous and
while he is enjoying it, he says he still struggles to find a reason to play… One
of, if not the most important aspects for gamers about gaming is why do we
play?

For most games it comes as Instant
Gratification in the form of an adrenaline rush from the Dev created content. But
EVE is not an Instant Gratification game, it is the Long Game… but
interestingly because Risk and Loss are Real in EVE, the adrenaline rush in PVP
and sometimes even in PVE combat can be far far better. We all know the main problem
with Dev created content is that it takes veteran players just days or even
hours to burn through content that can take years to create, and then, no
matter how good it is, it’s over. Look at WoW’s last big expansion… My friend
completed it in one week… just one godsdamned week!

In EVE we need the Devs to care
for and maintain the sandbox, to keep the sand clean, to craft the NPC Lore, to
keep making the toys we need and want to build and play with, and destroy. We
also do need them to create the work we do… the mining, market, BPOs, missions,
sites, belts and interactions with the NPCs that inhabit this great verse with
us… We do all of this in order to make the ISK we need so we can afford to lose
what we fly when we fight. ALL of the Dev created content in EVE is the
background and sets and props we use in living out our stories, creating our
history, creating the player’s Lore.

No group of Devs could ever begin
to write or code the Lore and content we MAKE every single day. And say what
you will… the Mittani, Goonswarm Federation and their Allies are creating Lore
and Content in EVE… Lore and Content for all those who want to get involved and
take part on either side, Lore and Content for those who will work to profit
from it and Lore and Content for those who will change their plans and game play
to avoid it…

After my friend completed the new
WoW content in one week he asked himself, “Now
what do I do?” “Run it again? but
why? for what reason, to what purpose?” And that is the crux issue here.
Why do we log on? what are we fighting for? what do we get out of it?

Monday, November 23, 2015

Welcome to
the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 69th edition! For more details
about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog
Banter page.

Blog Banter 69 - Because of Space-Magic.CCP sometimes get stuck between a
veldspar 'roid and a hard place when they try to blend realism with sensible
game mechanics in our sci-fi simulator. Sometimes they create a scientific
answer such as 4th dimensional drag to explain our 'submarines in space'. Other
times, not so much.

When a null-sec
Citadel is destroyed players 'stuffz' is to be magicked to another station.Why
should a citadel be different to a titan?Should CCP ensure that 'space magic' always has a plausible explanation
or do we need just to say "Well, it’s only a game!" and engage the
willing suspension of disbelief? How
should it work when a citadel goes boom, how do we balance risk with reward,
and how should any "space-magic" be explained?

==================================================

First off, I hate that term, “Space
Magic”, I really do. Wanna know why? Cause I am an aficionado of Science
Fiction… not Fantasy. Oh don’t get me wrong, my dad gave me his original copies
of the Hobbit and LotR set when I was young, I think around 9 or so and I fell deeply
in love with all of it. And for them as dunt know it, J.R.R. wrote the Hobbit
as a boys book, not as adult fare and as many do know he wrote all of it as a
way to give life, a background, the Lore if you will, to the languages he
created. My love for J.R.R.’s stories, their characters and events and places
is unbounded, but…

I don’t want to BE an elf. Nor do
I want to BE Frodo, or Gandalf or Bildo much less do I want to wander (OK go a
Questing) in Middle Earth following some improbable female elf ass in a bikini
all around… much less some manly elf guys ass, or any other ass for that
matter. I tried and trialed many of the fantasy MMOs through the years and none
held the slightest interest for me. This was why I came to EVE as basically an
MMO noob in my 50th year. The SciFi MMO’s I tried were all planet based and I had
become disenchanted and didn’t try very hard to find any that were space based
either. MMO’s in general didn’t interest me, until EVE.

I have no other interest in fantasy
except LOTR, outside of those stories alone I am a Science Fiction reader. To
me, there is no Magic except in Middle Earth, everywhere else there is only
Science. So much so that I firmly believe in Clark’s
3rd Law: “Any sufficiently
advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I mean take an iPhone
back 200 years, take a few pix and vids of the locals and see if you don’t get
burned at the stake as a Witch and a Stealer of Souls.… go ahead, try it.

The difference between us and
them is we understand and accept that there are things in the world we do not
understand yet… things that, to us, look like ‘magic’… but KNOW they aren’t...
We know that they are a simply as yet undefined phenomenon, that’s all. Just
like sunlight and lightning use to be yet to be defined phenomena, phenomena we
control and make use of every second of every day today.

Yes, at least in the Lore I want that
detailed TLDR technical explanation of the seeming Magic Trick… not just “Hocus
Pocus”+‘Wavy Hands’=Voilà!… I hate hate hate that we land on stations and are ‘magically’
transported inside them, and yet we have to manually undock by flying out of a
docking port. If we have transporters capable of transporting a fully loaded Providence
INTO a station, then they damn well can transport it OUT. No, just goddamn No.

There is no coding reason, other
than the work involved in coding it, why we can’t land at a station, where the
docks are aligned to the various Star Gates (or the Nav Beacons set in space so
we can maneuver around those pesky planets and moons that we SHOULD NOT BE ABLE
to WARP THROUGH…)… anyhoo, so we land facing a dock, burnin until we are INSIDE
the dock and then I’ll accept “poof” and you’re in your Hangar Bay (and yes I
would personally prefer to FLY into the station and FLY through the station to
my Bay… but that’s for another post). Now the converse must also be true, If we
set course before we undock, then we fly out of (the station ejects us from)
the dock facing that Gate/Nav Beacon… if we don’t set a course, then the station
chooses the least crowded dock to punt us out of… simple right?

Yeah… but never gonna happen in
EVE. Wanna know why? Cause PVP.

Landing and being transported IN
can provide some modicum of safety for those transporting goods around, and
goods making it to the station where they will be sold is good for the economy…
but, PVP… so undocking takes place at the same spot for every one and very
rarely point towards the gate you need to go to, so you are at a far greater
PVP risk when starting your journey. PVP balance. Not too much safety which the
PVPers would scream bloody murder about and not too much Risk, which the PVEers
would scream…. Ya-da ya-da…

This is the thing about “magic”
in EVE. PVP. As Drak pointed out, the crux is Risk vs Reward. Much of the ‘magic’
in EVE was decided on not for good gameplay or Immersion in a virtual
environment… if you want that, do as I do and fly in Elite Dangerous where
immersion and physics take precedence over PVP considerations. But then ED is
not a PVP game, it is a PVE game with some open world PVP. As such the Frontier
Devs have devoted far more time to the physics of their verse than the CCP Devs
have… they have different goals you see?

Drak asks (paraphrased), “How and Why should a citadel be different,
or the same as, a Titan?”

What Drak is asking, in effect
is, what do you think about “Asset Safety”. At EVE Vegas CCP Nullarbor did the
Structures presentation where he discussed everything Structures but... we are talking
specifically about Asset Safety. This is
the when a null-sec Citadel is destroyed players 'stuffz' is to be magicked
to another station thing that kicked off this particular BB. Nullsec
players, it seems, are not willing to risk it all… not ‘really.’

Oh I know with a Sov Flip you can
get locked out of a station you used to have access to and thereby, “lose” all
your stuff that was in that station. That happened to me once. But the truth
is, you don’t. All the stuff stays in your personal or corp hangar bays which
the new owners have no access to… even though they took control of the station by
force of arms or by subversive or traitorous action. But it’s OK… ‘cause you
can still make contracts, valid legal contracts transferring ownership of any
assets in a flipped Station to whoever you want. Which means you can sell your ‘lost’
goods’ to someone with access to that station, or whatever other arrangement
you care to make.

No again, this makes no sense and
is all about risk-adversity and stuff-retention and not about Immersion and
Risk=Reward… it’s about “But I dunt wanna
lose my stuffs!” Anyhoo… so now, with these destructible Outposts and
Stations, IE Citadels, CCP needs a way to keep the players stuff safe or they
risk losing players to ‘safer’ games. Who’da though you’d ever hear that about
Nullseccers? Seems we’re all a bit Risk Adverse under the rhetoric.

So, Asset Safety goes into effect
automatically on station destruction OR can be implemented manually whenever.
Everything is ejected into space, all Personal and Corp hangars are safely
recovered. You then choose where to recover your stuff. Stations in same
system, is free and takes 5 days. Nearest NCP Station, cost 10-15% of the value
and takes 20 days to be available to you.

Here is the break-down of what
drops and what is saved.

But… for me specifically the
answer to the BB question, “How and Why should
a citadel be different, or the same as, a Titan?”First off, it aint different in
Anoikis. This question is space biased… It applies only to Empire. In Anoikis,
in wormhole space our POSes, our Citadels, if subjected to a Rapid Unplanned Disassembly,
will drop a percentage of everything… just like ships. No Magic Safety Net for
us oh no.

As far as I am concerned, if it
is this way for us, it should be this way for everyone… we wormholers are being
punished for living in holes and this will I fear reduce the number of players willing
to live and die in Anoikis. Unfair CCP, unfair. Of course that is exactly why
CCP is making this safety net for nullsec… to keep them from fearing to live
and play in their space. But fuck Anoikis I guess. Here is the break-down of
what drops… everything.

Asset Safety, this magic-save-yer-stuff-net,
is not realistic in the game context and it is not in the spirit of EVE. It is
however as I said, in the spirit of we-don’t-want-to-alienate-nullseccers… and
that’ all it is. It is one more WoWish nerf of EVE’s ‘Loss is Real’ and ‘Risk=Reward’
basis. And the distance from here to where players can’t lose dey stuffs ever is
not as long a leap as it used to be, now is it? And it is one I fear CCP will one
day make in the interest of financial stability and profits.

“The brainchild of the Blogfather, Crazy Kinux, blog banters are single
subjects discussed across the EVE blogging community. It encourages the sharing
of ideas and cross-pollination of readership. All in all a healthy thing for
any community.“

Thursday, November 19, 2015

I logged into Star Citizen last
night after a bit of trouble with the client. I could not find a reason but the
Launcher would not install the client. Finally used “Run as Admin” and that
solved the issue. This was, essentially, my first real exploration of SC as the
few times I had logged on before I just boofed around the hangar, checking out
my ship, the Aurora MR, that’s me
up there, ol Tur, sittin in my Aurora in the hangar bay… (I highly recommend
you watch the… commercial).

My Aurora MR "Ignobilium"

OK, so initially I was boofing
around in the Hangar and checking out my singleship, trying out the camera,
looking for good shots to capture the moment as twere. The First Person
aspects… are definitely in the Win column. Walking around the world, entering
your ship like you would IRL, climbing in through the airlock, taking a seat in
the cockpit or climbing into your bunk. Yes, I said climbing into your bunk.

"Feenominal Cosmic Spasship!! itty bitty living space..."

The Aurora has a by the gods bunk
in the back and you can get in it to ‘sleep’ (IE logoff)… schweet. One thing
I want, I want name my ship. In EVE we can do this as a mechanic in the game,
in ED we can’t and I don’t see a Ship Name option offered in SC… that one goes
in the Boo column.

The Captain's Quarters, Star Citizen style...

Anyhoo, so I ended up wandering
around the Hangar Bay and found the door out… Yes Virginia, in Star Citizen before
the game has even been released, the Door works. Ironic huh? So I found that
there is a short corridor, really just a largish airlock, between the Hangar
and… well, a city. Or at least several blocks of a city. I walked through
Customs, with the std non-interactive mannequin NPCs and out into the Area 18
courtyard in ArcCorp City on Stanton III, keeping in mind that ArcCorp City is,
well, the whole damn planet (this is the alpha of the Social Module in SC). It
was… impressive to say the least…

View from the lobby between the Hangar Bay and Area 18...

Now here is where the fun begins.
First thing I did was do the tourist thing… you know, wander around with my
head on a swivel and my pie hole open catching alien flies of course until I
saw a stairway leading up to another level. I thought to get a better overall view
from there and started up it… and when I veered a bit to the right to look over
the railing… I fell through a glitch. Yup… fell right through the effin railing
to a ledge I could neither jump or climb up from nor safely jump or climb down
from. Frak. I spent a quite a while there… enjoying the view, wondering if I
was gonna die, and knowing that, in SC, you are NOT immortal… (moar on that
little bit of depressing news later…) So, yup… in my first 10 minutes logged
into SC I had gotten myself stuck onna ledge that… well, watch your feet, cause
that first step is a fukkin doozy…

Damn computer glitches...

Anyhoo… I explored both sides of
the ledge and jumped and jumped trying to climb up until my mouse finger, well,
dint bleed actually but you know what I mean… until I gave up. Then I tried,
very carefully, to see if I could jump down to another, lower ledge… you know,
just in case there was another way around or… nope. YYYYYAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa!
Splat.

Well. That was interesting, and you wake up (respawn) in a hospital... LOL

Having inadvertently figured out
life and death in the big city, now we get to the fun part… exploring!

Ye Olde Gunne Shoppe...

The anticipation I felt when I saw
a gun shop across the courtyard was… well, I’m an American and as so many of my
EU friends have said, “You Americans and your love affair with guns!” (said
with a sneer in a strong British accent) The which always strikes me as very strange
when said in chat in a WAR GAME like EVE or in an FPS… You know, a First Person
SHOOTER game, in which you SHOOT people… a lot of people, with guns and machine
guns and lasers and rocket launchers and tanks FFS… but they have an ‘issue’
with me ‘liking ‘real guns… sheesh.

But yes, I do have a strong
interest in firearms… I have been a hunter all my life, since I was 8, I have
been a target shooter, a registered PI, a gunsmith and a firearms instructor…
so yeah, I have an interest in firearms, virtual or real and a gunshop in a
spaceship game… well hell, of course I’m excited! Until I went inside…

We are not impressed...

What is with game Devs vision of
stores in the future? Why do ALL of them have HUGE wide open aisles with a vast
amount of empty floorspace?? No retailer worth his weight in Vaduul ears would
ever allow so much wasted space! I know whereof I speak, I used to be a gunshop
manager FFS!! There were like 17 guns on the rack in this shop… I had in one
shop easlily HALF the floor space of ‘Cubby Blast’ (effin ‘tarded name there
BTW) and 10 times that many guns!! Not to mention aisle racks loaded with holsters,
cleaning kits, knives, hunting kit and gee-gaws and tons of military surplus
gear and ammo shelves!

Seriously?

So, disappointed I was and am…
Could not actually buy a gun, could not use the range, couldn’t even find a
door for it and the asshat behind the counter was a mannequin and the counters…
don’t get me started about the counters!!
EMPTY!! Has anyone ever seen store counters as devoid of merchandise,
outside of Russia at the height of the cold war?? I haven’t… so much work needs
to be done here!! But at least the posters were cool.

Schweet! Long damn time for a meme to last though... =P

OK, so next up… G~Loc! A swanky-low-brow-spacer
bar. Granted ‘twas the middle of the afternoon, so dead was not the word, but,
if they ever get to where you can really interact with your avatars, the
atmosphere and décor are at least interesting enough… that and I’d love to see
this place IRL. Downsides? Wayyyyyyyyy too few bottles for a real bar… Ever
been in a real bar? Ever seen just 27 bottles on display or ready to pour?
Nope, me neither and what’s with the wall mounted bottle holder/pourer things?
What, bartenders of the future can’t do the flippin bottles thing?

Ya just gotta love this sign!

Not bad, nice ambiance...

Where's the bottle rack? Beer glasses? Wine glasses? Shot glasses?

What in Sam Hell are those bottle holder things??

So next up was… a clothing store.
I could not give less of a fuck for how my avatar is dressed up. All the people
who threw such a fit back in Incarna were all on about how “World of Darkness”
was nothing but “Sparkly Barbies”… and while I desperately want FP gameplay in
EVE, the ‘dress-up’ part of avatar based gameplay holds absolutely no interest
for me, whatsoever… So I walked right past Casabas. Besides, who names these
places? Isn’t a Casaba a “…winter seasonal melon of a variety with a wrinkled
yellow rind and sweet flesh?” How is that a good name for a clothing store? I
mean really?

A wrinkled yellow sweet flesh clothing store... meh.

Onward… Around the courtyard is a
stairway leading to a flying walkway over… well, I don’t know how far up we are
from the ground or groundfloor of these buildings, but I found I have a fear of
railings now in SC… go figure, but the view is stunning. At the end of the
skyway was the entrance to Astro Armada. At first, after the shitty names of a
few of the business here, I thought the name was a word play on Ramada Inn,
like the, you know, the Ramada of the Stars, IE a hotel. But nope… it was a
high end spaceship firm. I did take some pix inside but…

First one the name actually means what it says...

You see I was not alone. I
haven’t talked about the other players who were there because… well, they have
borne out, in full, all of Rixx Javix’s fears about FP avatar gameplay. There
were like 1 or 2 at first then I noticed a few more over time. At one point
there were like 5 or 6 active in the courtyard and surrounding spaces. ALL of
them spent the whole time I was there jumping and jumping and jumping and
running full tilt all over the place. And all they wanted to do was find a way,
any way, to fuck shit up if at all possible. You see there are these carts, like
fancy futuristic golf carts, that spawn now and again in places around Area 18.

Anyway, so you have these golf
carts see… and these, players, see… and all they can think of to do is ram them
into everything… and everyone… and try and get them to go over the railings…
and into the buildings… and so then you get this… see?

Burning wrecked carts and silly jumping hooligans <facepalm>

Anyway… so while they are all
doing exactly as Rixx guessed and acting like pure ‘tarded fools… I went so far
as to toggle my avatar to walk mode instead of jog for my leisurely sightseeing
stroll around the city and I have been trying to avoid getting any of those
idiots in my pix. Needless to say, they were jumping ALL over the showroom
model of a schweet single seat fighter on display inside Astro Armada and I
didn’t take any pix in there… simply too silly for me. I know these guys are
all supposed to somewhere in like their 20s and 30s… but TBH it was like being
surrounded by 10 year olds on a serious sugar buzz… I’m 55 and I wanted to
enjoy the immersion of such a highly detailed virtual environment… not feel
like I was at home with my kids at a birthday party.

OK, back outside of Armada there
was an obvious alleyway off to the left of the Armada and stairs leading down
to what felt like the edge of town, you know, the poor side of town… the
beginning of the back alleys and side streets where scantily dressed 5 credit hookers
in eff-me-pumps and men of bad repute live and hang out. At the bottom of the
stairs was “Dumpers Depot.”… OMFG… the names are soooo atrocious. Ima write a
letter to Roberts I am.

Feels like heading to the poor side of town

So Dumpers Depot is a junkyard
and salvage operation on the back side of the courtyard. And low and behold,
there is an alleyway leading to the dark, trashy lowrent section of Area 18. I,
of course, haddda go take a look see.

The corner of Dumpster and Skid Row

And it was… a full set of back
alleys littered with trash and trashbags busted open everywhere and puddles of
oily looking water, busted open crates, locked fences, keep out signs, poor
lighting, danger, gloom and despair…

The mean streets of Area 18

Garbage disposal in the far far future... man still can't keep his home clean.

But… as dirty and ugly as the
back side was, it was also very human and for a virtuality, real enough. There
is another courtyard accessible back there… with signs proclaiming “Galleria Retail,
Coming Soon!”… and that block of closed off, under construction buildings faces
this view…

Not bad…

Nope… not bad at all at all…
Yeah… I’ll be coming back, oh yes I will.
=]

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

I have been on and playing EVE,
sporadically yet randomly… Seems others are still in AFG mode and I find myself
getting bored once again. For the last few weeks I have been loggin on pretty
much every night, but all I am doing is scanning all the things, which means
just those few sites and holes that have popped in the prior 24 hrs, and I have
been runnin the gas sites for something to do solo, but overall… meh.

Also last night was the first
night I have logged on Elite Dangerous in a couple months. Not that it’s not a
good game, it is, but I was focusing on grinding up enough Creds to stop
playing just to make creds if you know what I mean, and grinding in any game
just to grind is… well, grindy TBH.I was doing the main Rares
Circuit and pulling in approx. 1m to 1.5m Cred per round trip per session… but
it’s a long 30ish hop/160LYish runs from Zaonce/Lave/Leesti/Diso/Orrere to Witchhaul/Fujin/39
Tauri/Zeessze/George Pantazis then back again…

I always take the
Economical instead of Fastest routes hence the 30ish hops, there are some upsides and downsides to both.The Fastest routes may cut your
hops in half, but they have two major downsides… They push the limits of your
fuel use, so for each hop you have to orbit the sun, if it’s the right type of star, and scoop
fuel for an unacceptably long time. The other issue is when you land on a sun
that is not scoopable… and you have already burned 50% or 80% or more of your
fuel on that time saving long ass jump… you can find yourself rightfully
screwed if there is not a scoopable star in that system or if there isn't a system with
a scoopable star within what jump range you have left.

You have only three options then…
see if any friends can be bothered to yer skeevy ass or… whoyagonnacall? Fuel Rats!

…who will save you by coming and transferring
fuel to you with Fuel
Transferer Drones (OK, Limpets… really? Limpets??) or you can Self-destruct…
you know, push buhtan, count to 30, go Boom, lose ship (replaced) and all cargo
(not), wake up in station…

Fig 1.

or wait until the same thing
happens… only slower…

Fig 2.

<wheeze> tick,
<wheeze> tick… OXYGEN
DEPLETED IN: 0:00… Boom (see Fig
1. above above). Though why in Bob's Name your ship assplodes just because you ran out of gas and air, assphyxiated, turned purple and died I know not... itsa mystery. I mean really... who wires up the self destruct to the air supply?

OK, so I choose Economical. You hop,
you land, check sun for scoopworthyness, if OK, scoop, run a system scan, finish scooping and warp
out to your next system in usually under 30 seconds. Yes, you make a helluva lot
more hops, but you get back into warp and are essentially exposed to threats
for less time each hop AND you NEVER run out of fuel. It does however make for
some looooooong ass boring trips. One nice bonus is I can sell the data
collected by all those system scans… I have picked up as much as an extra 50k
Cred from that.

So even though I finally broke
out of my one game rut, in both the games I play now I am basically bored but
that’s not to say that nothing interesting has happened in my gaming life
recently… it has, though not in either EVE or Elite Dangerous…

In Star Citizen.

Yea, in the game no has yet
played. Oh I know I know there’s the Hangar and Arena Commander… but the game I
am waiting on, the one no one has played yet, is the whole game, the
persistent ‘verse, the thousands of stars and systems. What they have so far is
nice n all, but truthfully in comparison to what we are expecting, it’s just a
taste… like a CQ in EVE that has an Open Door… but one that only leads to one station on SISI,
not to all of TQ. It’s a good taste, but it’s not the GAME… and I want the game, not an
arena.

Anyhoo, I have bought the basic
access with the noob ship, the “Aurora MR AC Starter Pkg”… on discount. I
logged in and walked around and was highly impressed with the First Person
aspects. This game will flat out rock on the Oculus. I like the ships I was
able to board, sit in and walk around in. I haven’t undocked though… as I said,
waiting to undock into the ‘verse not a single ‘room’ or dungeon… EVE and ED
have spoiled me that way.

So, I get this email… “New
Organization Invitation Received” from Roberts Space Industries… from a corp, a
corp that wants me to join them, a corp that wants me to join them in Star Citizen,
a corp that wants me to join them in Star Citizen a game that has not been
released even in beta yet. Interesting.

Now I and you gentle reader are
both fully aware this is most probably a form letter, auto-generated and sent
based on some algorithm that looks at unaffiliated yet active SC accounts...
yet, it was ‘from’ a ColtNickel, I’ll have to see if he is actually a recruiter.
It was a lot of the usual “Pilots just
wanna have fu-un!” kinda recruiting hype, you know… “Hi there! We’re looking for Casual and Hardcore gamers, young and old, wet-behind-the-ears-noobs
and washed-up-cranky-bittervets, crippled, blind or crazy and no more than 30
minutes dead!”

ADI has four Divisions and
currently 2250 members:

Commerce, Mining & Logistics

Asset Protection & Recovery

Exploration & Survey

Fleet Security

…and they have 3 basic Rules:

Rule #1: Do not be a jerk.

Rule #2: Do not cause drama.

Rule #3: Real life comes first.

In EVE, at least in our home corp
HBHI and in HELPeR, #1 & #2 are the same, and #3 is, “RL>Any Game” and
should go without saying. However, some obvious things bear repeating as they
are not as obvious as they should be to some so meh.

Anyway… there was this whole links
you had to click and things you have read and stuff you have to do when you
join and I was all like, but I don’t even know any of these guys. I mean I get
that unless you are joining a corp some friends are already in or something
then you can’t expect to know anyone… but I’m not clicking and reading and
doing until I have talked to a few people at least… geez, what kind of a gurl
do you think I am anyway?

So I did the Comms part and
logged onto their Mumble server. As the letter said I was in the lobby for only
a minute or so and like 6 guys popped up to the lobby and said hi. We chatted
for a while and it was very interesting. A few were former EVE players, none
active the now but all knew of it. And when they asked what I did in EVE…
Wormholes… the response was definitive and immediate… “You need to be in Exploration. Yeah, you’ll do well there.”

One thing that came up was my
age. The guys I met were mostly in college or just starting their careers, and
ADI’s about page says the members are mostly 20s to 30s. I didn’t catch if any
on that night were married, but I didn’t think so. They were pretty interested
in getting an older gamer to join up, I thought that was intriguing…

A few things didn’t sit 100% with
me… Their corp description says, “ADI
believes in training members to a higher level than most orgs." which sounds
all L33T n shit until you read, “Members will be required to obtain a
certificate for any and all gameplay roles in Star Citizen.” which smacks
of EVE style “Minimum SP Requirements” which I don’t like. They also have a
firm anti-piracy rule, which I am mostly fine with… mostly.

Membership Requirements:

* Must have and use Mumble;
headset strongly recommended

* Must be mature

* Must not cause drama

* Must be loyal to Atlas Defense
Industries and not be a part of any other organization

The Membership Requirements
listed above are in principle fine, but in
detail, well...

* I don’t agree with requiring
players in a game to spend money on equipment.

In this case a headset that in
truth is not, like a PC, absolutely required to play the game.

(However as I already has 2
headsets so… meh.)

* Show me a bullet proof acid
test for Maturity and we’ll talk about that one.

* Show me a drama free human and
I’ll ask you to take the corpse back outside.

* ADI is an ‘Exclusive’ Corp,
meaning you aren’t allowed have accounts/alts in other Corps.

Which sounds ok on the face of it,
but like EVE, how in hell could you know? You can’t ‘require’ loyalty… people
and organizations earn that over time by BEING loyal to their members. Either
way I’m not taking any oaths and not crazy about taking ‘tests’ to be allowed
to play with others… it’s a game.

With all the above said, I do
find it interesting that so many people are so deeply involved in the Star
Citizen project. And, TBH, I do hope it all comes to fruition… I really do (I
spent $50 bucks dammit). And at first glance and from a brief Mumble convo I liked
what I heard and there is no ‘perfect’ corp or guild or gamer group… there are
just gamers and I am one of them.

I think mebbe tonight I’ll logon
to SC, get on Mumble and try out the Arena… can’t hurt, and who knows… might be
fun. =]

Them as what follow me...

Graphiti...

Round and round we go...

Fav Post Bytes...

"Maybe we're not that different after all and I have my own reality to get to grips with."Absence of Substance

Now THAT is wisdom...

We are, each and alone, the absolute center of our subjective 'verse... this is the way of life.To see another's POV as if it were your own... this is the way of truth...To allow that some others have POVs you cannot and will never understand, and yet accept them as they are, this is the way of acceptance...To kill them all without rancor or anger, but in brotherhood... this is the way of EVE.

This Is What We DO!!!

POD Locked

We're Soooo Bad at Hisec!

New Odysseyt Wormhole Jump Animations

EVE Forever, the Second Decade

EVE Easter Egg

Quafe's The One

Negato:

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